Heritage in the Hat: Red Buck Pruitt

By Malcolm Sissons on August 21, 2025.

If Llewellyn H. Pruitt had followed his 1907 plan for making brick, he might have mined out the hills where East Glen now sits!

L. H. Pruitt was born in Franklin, Georgia, in 1846 although his family moved to Texas by 1860. Married to Emmaline Johnston in 1871, he went by L. H. or “Red Buck”, maybe because Llewellyn was too hard to spell! Pruitt grew his interests into a major stake in Snyder, Texas, known as the Red Buck Ranch, where a ranch house was constructed in 1895, inhabited by Pruitt, his wife “Emma” and their children.

He abandoned all that in 1897, selling 40 sections of ranch land and 2400 cattle for less than market value with a plan to move to Canada with a herd. He and his cowboys brought 1600 head of cattle to Big Sandy, Montana, by rail then trailed them north to the border, where he was interviewed by the NWMP and the cattle inspected. He then settled the cattle about twenty miles south of Medicine Lodge Coulee on the Lost River range.

By 1906, Pruitt had retired from ranching and was dabbling in real estate. He had a number of buildings rented out. One of his buildings was the Green Pruitt Block at 627/629 Third Street (Labels).

With a seemingly insatiable demand for brick in Western Canada, Pruitt decided to build a pressed brick plant south of the CPR track, near Ross Creek, on the east edge of town. The Pruitt Brick plant was connected to municpal gas, and mined clay from the hillside. This was a modern plant, with ten men under Mr. J. Green producing 20,000 brick a day. It’s not clear what kind of kilns were used.

However, despite promising reports in the local media, the product exhibited some flaws and he stated that he had lost $20,000 on bad product, a fortune in those days. After looking for alternative sources of clay, Pruitt agreed to amalgamate with the Purmal Brick Company in 1909, moving his assets to their site (today’s Brick and Tile). In the last century, local historian Don Lefever showed me some remaining LP bricks, adjacent to the CPR. These days, after floods and the CPR rebuilding its roadbed, nothing much remains of the original operation.

In October 1911, after Jacob Purmal died and his brother, Charles Purmal, moved to the coast for health reasons, Pruitt took control of Purmal Brick Company but didn’t hold it long, selling to the Birnie brothers, local merchants, thirteen months later.

In 1912, Pruitt announced he was moving to his fruit farm in Oregon, but he retained the Green Pruitt Block on Third Street for rental revenue and an apartment where L.H. and Emma occasionally stayed. Red Buck Pruitt died in 1925 in Euphrata, Washington, the end of a colourful career.

Malcolm Sissons is Vice-President of the Historical Society of Medicine Hat and District.